Over the past several years I’ve found the ColorChecker Passport to be an invaluable tool for my photography. It lets me get consistent colour weeks or months apart, even using different cameras. But it has one slight drawback. It’s only really compatible with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. And more recently, DNG Profile support was added […]

The word grunge was coined by the writer Paul Ramball and it refers to the sub-genre of alternative rock originating in Seattle in the 80s. However, over time, the term grunge became intertwined with visual arts.

Grunge has become a popular trend in graphic design and photography nowadays, probably because it provides a strong contrast to the simplistic and minimal look of the Web 2.0 and so-called Apple’s aesthetic. Grunge is characterized by its organic, realistic and rugged look that feels weathered and raw.

Grunge look can be applied to both portraiture and landscape photography, which makes it very versatile.

The following 10 tips will help you add a grunge vibe to your photographs in post-production:

1. Create and incorporate textures

Grunge is all about those powerful gritty textures! In case your photos lack interesting textures, you can still incorporate them in post-production. This is not a complicated task! When handling textures, you need to use only a few tools – simple shapes, blending modes and layer masks. You can draw or paint textures by yourself or take photos of eye-catching textures that you’d like to use in your grunge images.

Textures create great contrast and give photographs a real-life feel!

Photo by Pineapple Supply Co. on Unsplash

2. Download textures

In case you’re not capable of making textures that you’d like to use in your grunge images, don’t worry! There are plenty of textures you can find via the web and some of them are free to use.

Pay attention to 3D textures and metal textures, since they look great in grunge photos.

Photo by Didi Medina on Unsplash

3. Add noise and grain

Adding a certain amount of grain to your photos will make them look weathered and they might resemble old film photographs. This kind of vintage effect will probably suit your grunge photos, so give it a try.

There are many apps that can help you add grain to your photos if you’re not too much into Photoshop and Lightroom. Great examples of such apps are Fast Retro Camera and Step.

Photo by Mikail Duran on Unsplash

4. Understand curves adjustment

Adjust the curves of your photo is a relatively simple but powerful way to change the entire atmosphere of the photograph.

You can start by fading the highlights in your photo and emphasizing the shadows. This step will bring a certain “underground“ feel to your photo and will work great with portraits!

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

5. Add a photo filter

Photo filters are a subtle way to change the mood of your photos. You can match the colours of old film photographs if you know how to use photo filters properly.

Old films often have a prominent pink hue because of colour fading. What has actually happened is that two of the three colour dye layers (cyan and yellow) have faded, leaving magenta the prominent hue.

You can increase the density of magenta colour in your grunge photos for this “pink effect“ – it looks best between 7-14%.

Photo by Allef Viniciusa on Unsplash

6. Add a gradient map

If you never use gradient maps in your photo editing routine, grunge photos might be the perfect occasion to experiment with gradients! For starters, you can select the gradient preset with purple, green, and orange.

Gradient maps look best when used with layer blend modes such as “screen“ and with the opacity of roughly 25%.

You can adjust the colours in your gradient map to emulate different film types – it’s possible to achieve a warm or cool look, depending on your preferences.

Photo by Frankie Cordoba on Unsplash

7. Adjust vibrance settings

You can also experiment with vibrance adjustment in your grunge photos. Reducing or increasing the vibrance and saturation can add an unexpected twist to photos and improve your visual storytelling.

Reducing the saturation will add the vintage analogue look to your images while bumping up the vibrance will help you retain the sharpness of the colours.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

8. Experiment with b&w conversions

Converting your image to b&w won’t necessarily make it look gritty and raw, but if you combine b&w with additional effects such as noise or gradients, you can end up with a rather unique grunge vibe.

You can also try to replace black tones with brown and white tones with yellow in your b&w grunge photos. This trick will make the images appear less polished and rougher!

Photo by Dmitri Popov on Unsplash

9. Add Gaussian blur

You should use Gaussian blur sparingly because you certainly don’t want your images to look obviously blurry – the key is subtlety!

Gaussian blur can be used for blurring parts of an image (like backgrounds or unnecessary distractions) and for softening the edges of a layer mask – it gives you many creative options that you can incorporate into your grunge images.

Photo by Himanshu Singh Gurjar on Unsplash

10. Try out various presets or apps

If you’re not confident enough when it comes to your Photoshop skills or if you post photos primarily from your phone, there are various apps that can produce amazing grunge effects.

Snapseed is one of the most popular apps for such effects and it’s free as well.

Besides Snapseed, other well-known apps for grunge photography are PicGrunger (specialized for grunge effects), Mextures (great for applying textures and light leaks) and Pics Art Photo Studio (it comes with a great range of in-app features, tools and filters).

Photo by Didi Medina on Unsplash

In case this wasn’t enough for you and you feel like you want to dig deeper into the grunge aesthetic, you can find some interesting tips and tricks at the following links:

We often hear that people meter with their histograms. And although that method comes with some caveats, it can be a fantastic way to meter your shot and fine tune your exposure. In this video, Becki & Chris (well, mostly Chris), walk us through what the histogram is, how to read it and how to […]

Gorgeous female portraits by Manny Perez, a talented photographer, retoucher, and artist currently based in New York City. Manny focuses mainly on female portrait and fashion photography. He shoots also a lot of beauty, street style, outdoor, and lifestyle portraits.

For financial services, social media marketing offers more opportunities with targeted marketing. Learn how financial brands that customize their visuals to match their ad targeting can see more success.

Organic content engagement in recent years has all but died. Algorithms designed to give preference to advertisers now decide social media feeds. This change has made one thing clear; if you want your content to play on social media, you’d better be willing to pay.

The shift to paid social comes with a major benefit for financial service marketers. There are massive amounts of audience data from social channels, and the ability to create extremely refined and customized offers. What once were elusive audience segments are now a paid social campaign away from being touched by marketing efforts.

A Growing Trend

The spending trends for for digital marketing by financial services backs this up as well. In a 2015 eMarketer report on US digital marketing trends by vertical, financial services came in third place for total digital marketing spending, coming in at a huge $7.2B total. The same report found that $4.7B of their total was spent on direct response digital marketing initiatives, where targeting is critical.

This data shows that financial service marketers are increasing their digital marketing budgets. Also, they’re increasingly relying on targeting to hit more specific audience segments. To get the best ROI, they should place as much effort into ensuring visuals match targeting. Even companies with limitless budgets and resources earn little return if the content misses the mark. Digital marketing is too competitive and too quickly digestible to waste valuable dollars on poor content visuals. To truly make the most of the targeting, visuals must be customized to speak directly to your brand’s target audience.

Comparing Customized Versus Generic Ad Content

To truly make the most of targeting, visuals need to be customized to speak exactly to the segments financial service marketers are aim for. Lets quickly compare two ads. One uses custom content and one does not.

Using Generic Content

Capital One is trying to make a connection between small businesses and their customized small business service offering.

The visuals used have a generic feeling to them and don’t represent the typical style of Capital One branding.

Superimposing their small business banking slogan “Success should never have limits” looks out of place and forced.

There’s little relevance between images and text, and no obvious small business banking connection.

In these two examples, it’s easy to see the difference between how Chase and Capital One market themselves on social channels. They offer similar services to similar consumers, but there’s a clear difference in how they use content.

Chase creates a clear but subtle line between their visuals and their services. They target their prospects with relevant images and matching copy that reflects their brand identity. On the other hand, Capital One almost considers the visuals as an afterthought. This makes for a tough connection to the intended audience.

Proof that Custom Content Works

Beyond a qualitative analysis between the two example brands, there’s proof that custom content works. Time Inc. surveyed 17,000 people across various generations. The goal of the study was to identify consumer perceptions towards custom content, and their feelings towards how brands use custom assets to integrate themselves into customers‘ worlds.

The results showed that 90% of respondents prefer brands that use custom content to engage with them. Similarly, 89% of respondents said custom content is the best way for brands to break through the clutter and stand out from the competition. These are stats that marketers can’t ignore if they want to manage an effective digital marketing strategy.

Building Audience Connections

Digital marketing channels and the content brands promote on them are as much about understanding what content resonates with your audience as it is about targeting them in the first place. For brands that can align these two things, bridging the connection with customers and building engagement becomes much easier. This is especially true for financial service brands, who must demonstrate the core value of the brand behind an often complicated product offering. The content that they create for their promotions will resonate with audiences so long as it shows that intended audience something unique about their identity that customers can connect and engage with.

Eager to learn more about how best to customize content for your financial service brand? Learn about how MasterCard created localized custom content at scale using Shutterstock Custom or book a demo and speak to one of our specialists about how to build your own brand’s unique visual identity.

Huawei and Leica go together like butter and bread when it comes to smartphone cameras.

Image via Huawei.

And, as far as Huawei is concerned, Leica is quite a powerful ally to have in its corner.

So it should come as no surprise that the new Mate 20 will also feature glass from the storied German optical brand.

Featuring a triple-lens system that Huawei is dubbing the Matrix Camera System, the company is also including a Leica 16mm ultra wide-angle among them in an addition that has many people intrigued about the smartphone’s overall capabilities.

In a press release describing the incorporation of the ultra wide-angle lens, Huawei said it was to deliver photos with “a sense of spaciousness and a three dimensional effect.”

Huawei boasts that the inclusion of this lens gives the smartphone’s camera an “all situation” adaptability that users tend to appreciate in a headset. After all, smartphones are built to accompany people at all times and thus cannot be as specialized as traditional cameras or else risk being somewhat irrelevant to the normal consumer.

Powered by a 40MP main camera, the Huawei Mate 20 lineup will also have a 20MP ultra wide-angle camera and a 8MP telephoto camera.

The range of lenses give the camera an “equivalent to the performance of a 16-270mm zoom lens” according to a press release picked up by Leica Rumors.

Like many other makers, Huawei is also incorporating artificial intelligence technology in the Mate 20 when it comes to picture processing. Called the AI Portrait Color video mode, this feature “can isolate human subjects and desaturate the colors around them to dramatically highlight the person.” Further, an “AI Spotlight Reel identifies clips with a shared theme and auto-generates a montage, made entirely of highlights.”

The new phones are currently on sale and top out $USD 1220 for the Pro edition.